The present invention relates to an image forming method of receiving, e.g., externally input image information in single-side and double-side printing modes, and sequentially forming images, and an image forming apparatus using this method.
An image forming apparatus such as a digital copying machine or printer can receive image information-from a terminal device such as an external personal computer via a communication means such as a cable, form an image corresponding to the received information on a recording medium, and output the image. This is done when, for example, a document prepared by operating by the user a terminal device connected to an image forming apparatus via a connection cable is to be printed in accordance with an instruction output from the terminal device. In this image formation processing, even if a series of pieces of image information transmitted at once are a document having a plurality of pages, all the pieces of image information are printed as image information of single-side or double-side printing pages. Image information including single- and double-side printing pages cannot be printed as one task.
However, as image forming apparatuses such as a printer and terminal devices such as a computer are widely spread, various needs arise for printing of a prepared document including single- and double-side printing pages. To print such document by a conventional image forming apparatus, single- and double-side pages must be reedited as separate document data, transmitted as separate document data to the image forming apparatus, and printed. This makes the operation cumbersome, prolongs the operation time, and causes malfunctions.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an image forming method capable of printing image information in single- and double-side printing modes, and an image forming apparatus for implementing this method.
To achieve the above object, according to the present invention, there is provided an image forming method comprising: the reception step of receiving image information including control information representing one of single-side printing and double-side printing for each page; and the image formation step of determining for each page corresponding to the control information received in the reception step whether the image information requires one of single-side printing and double-side printing, and forming the image information of the page on an image forming medium.
As described above, according to the present invention, control information representing one of single-side and double-side printing that is added to the header of image information for each page is received and determined to select a designated printing mode for each page. While image information is received, images are sequentially formed. The present invention can provide an image forming method capable of instructing printing of image information in single- and double-side printing modes, which cannot be executed in a conventional apparatus, with a simple operation similar to printing of all single-side pages or printing of all double-side pages in the conventional apparatus.
Moreover, the present invention can provide stackless and stack image forming apparatuses for implementing the image forming method with the same effects.